INVITATION TO DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH

First: Today more than ever, capitalism grows through war and the ongoing dispossession of all forms of life. The bad governments and the big capitalist businesses, all of which can be identified by name, try to disappear our struggles in defense of territory and Mother Earth, even normalizing the murder of our brothers and sisters who defend that territory and our Mother Earth. Today our collective heart hurts for the murders of:

Samir Flores Soberanes of the Nahua people of Amilcingo, Morelos.

Julián Cortés Flores, of the Mephaa people of the Casa de Justicia in San Luis Acatlán, Guerrero.

Ignacio Pérez Girón, of the Tzotzil people of the municipality of Aldama, Chiapas.

José Lucio Bartolo Faustino, Modesto Verales Sebastián, Bartolo Hilario Morales, and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote of the Nahua people organized as the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG – EZ).

Juan Monroy and José Luis Rosales, of the Nahua people Ayotitlán, Jalisco.

Feliciano Corona Cirino, of the Nahua people of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán.

Josué Bernardo Marcial Campo, also known as TíoBad, of the Populuca people of Veracruz.

Our compañeros were murdered for opposing the war the bad government is waging on our lands, hills, and waters in order to consolidate the dispossession that today threatens humanity’s existence.

We also feel the pain of the forced disappearance of our brother Sergio Rivera Hernández, Nahua of the Sierra Negra, Puebla, who also defended land and Mother Earth.

Second: The current neoliberal phase of capitalism takes on ever more monstrous forms, declaring open war on humanity and against the earth, our mother. Economic development today, based everywhere on finance capital and supported by the military and extractivist industries, dominates peoples, nations, and entire continents. It grows through real or fictitious wars and the proliferation of organized crime as well as invasions and coups d’état. Its insatiable consumptive and accumulative capitalist logic has brought us to the brink of irreversible climate change and a limit at which the very conditions for human life on the planet are at risk.

Third: In addition, the current system’s patriarchal organization, inherited from previous systems and civilizations but deepened over the past several centuries, has been exposed as a violent enemy of humanity as a whole but especially of women and our Mother Earth. In other words, the exploitation of and profound structural violence against women is an integral part of capitalism, although it was born long before. Capitalist private property, the foundation of this system, cannot be explained or understood except as part of a patriarchal system of domination over women and the earth.

Fourth: In Mexico, the acceleration of mining, extraction, and hydrocarbon pipelines, the creation of the National Guard within the logic of the Merida Initiative, and the imposition, at all costs, of major megaprojects (The Salina Cruz – Coatzacoalcos Trans-Isthmus Corridor, The Maya Train, the Morelos Integrated Project, and the New International Airport in Mexico City)—all of which are intended to reorganize territories, populations, and both the northern and Central American borders in a logic of capitalist displacement and exploitation—make a clearly anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal defense of human life, of the territories of our peoples, and of the earth all the more urgent. For these reasons:

We invite: the peoples of Mexico and the world; organizations and collectives of workers of the countryside, city, and seas; women; students; children; elders; and those across the range of sexual diversity to:

DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH “WE ARE ALL SAMIR”

On the following dates:

February 20, 2020: Local actions in Mexico and around the world in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth; in demand of justice for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned; and against the megaprojects of death.

February 21, 2020: March for Justice for Our Brother Samir Flores Soberanes and for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned, and in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth. Meet at the offices of the Federal Electricity Commission, Avenida Reforma, Mexico City, 4pm.

February 22, 2020: Assembly in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, to take place in downtown Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac, Morelos State, starting at 10am.

Sincerely,

January 7, 2020

For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples

Never Again a Mexico Without Us

AMILCINGO ASSEMBLY OF RESISTANCE

NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS/ INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL

ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY

PEOPLES, COMMUNITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, COLLECTIVES, AND INDIVIDUALS PARTICPATING IN THE FORUM IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH HELD DECEMBER 21-22, 2019 IN THE CARACOL JACINTO CANEK/CIDECI-UNITIERRA, SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS.

Networks, organizations, and collectives of Resistance and Rebellion who are adherents of the National and International Sixth

Yaqui Tribe of the Pueblo de Bácum, Sonora

Indigenous Peoples’ Assembly of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Organizational Process of the Sierra de Santa Martha, Veracruz

Náyeri People, Nayarit

Neighbors’ Council in Resistance in Tanque and Américas, Monterrey, Nuevo León

Community of San Lorenzo Azqueltán, Jalisco

Community members of Cherán, Michoacán

PROFECTAR, Pueblo Rarámuri de Chihuahua

Un Salto de Vida, Jalisco

Doce Pueblos de Tecámac Organization, Mexico State

Coordinating Committee for the Peoples and Organizations of Mexico City and the Western Part of the State of Mexico

General Assembly of the Peoples, Barrios, Neighborhoods and Pedregales of Coyoacán, Mexico City

Community of Coca de Mezcala, Jalisco

Nahua Indigenous Community of Zacualpan, Colima

Council of Ejidos and Communities in Opposition to the La Parota Dam Project in Guerrero

People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water in Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala